What is a software development kit?
In embedded development, the toolchain is often composed of cross-platform tools or tools executed on one architecture, which then produces a binary for use in another architecture – for example, a GCC tool that runs on an x86-64-compatible machine and generates binaries for an ARM machine is a cross-compiler. When a tool and the resulting binaries rely on dependencies from the same host on which the tool runs, this is commonly called a native build. Build and target architectures may be the same, but it is cross-compilation if the target binary uses a staged root filesystem to find its dependencies.
A software development kit (SDK) is a set of tools and files to develop and debug applications. These tools include compilers, linkers, debuggers, external libraries, headers, and binaries, also called a toolchain. It may also include extra utilities and applications. We can have two types of SDK:
- Cross-development SDKs: These have...
